The pro-Internet community has come together to launch a huge new campaign at http://StopTheTrap.net. Together, we're pushing back against the TPP: an agreement that is secretive, extreme, and could criminalize your daily use of the Internet. Take action now.

Onward,

- The OpenMedia.ca Team

Recent News

Imagine a world where you could be dragged to court and receive a large fine for simply clicking on the wrong link, where service providers would hand over information about your online activities without privacy safeguards, and where online content could be removed by big media conglomerates at will.

This scenario could become a reality before we know it. In just a few days, a group of 600 lobbyist “advisors” and un-elected trade representatives are scheming behind closed doors to decide how the Internet will be governed, including whether you could get fined for your Internet use. Instead of debating this openly, they’re meeting secretly to craft an Internet trap through an international agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Our government just signed Canada onto this arrangement, without our consent.

In short, it appears that it will be big-media lobbyists—not citizens—who get to decide whether Canadians will be fined as suspected copyright criminals. Please help us raise a loud call before it’s too late. Visit: http://stopthetrap.net. Read more »

Canadians kick off international coalition to fight new Internet restrictions proposed in TPP trade agreement

June 27, 2012 – OpenMedia.ca launched a campaign today, supported a by a group of organizations, to stand against the new Internet restrictions, including new content fines, that Internet users will be subject to through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. Read more »

What's at stake when we fight for Internet openness by tackling copyright and other intellectual property issues? This article describes it well:

"It’s not that we don’t need to protect intellectual property at all. But the protections must take into account that innovation is often a cumulative process, with each step piggybacking on the ideas before it. [...] Overly strong intellectual property laws that stop creators from using earlier innovations could slow creation over all and become a barrier for new technologies to reach the market."

Canada's copyright bill—which contains strict "digital locks" provisions—is in the Senate right now, and the restrictive international TPP agreement is progressing. Join the international pro-Internet community to stay informed and be a part of the movement for innovation and openness.

Article by Eduardo Porter for The New York Times:

Casual observers would find little in common between the smartphones in their pockets and the funky backbeat of the Beastie Boys’ Car Thief. But these two creations will go down together in the annals of creativity as reminders of the flaws in our intellectual property laws. Read more »

I don't often have the opportunity to talk about how I got involved in OpenMedia.ca's work to safeguard the possibilities of the Internet, or how OpenMedia.ca operates. For those interested, here's a wide-ranging interview I did with TVO's Search Engine recently…Read more »

The Conservative Party said they'd pass the online spying bill in their first 100 days as majority government and we, together, stopped them. The House of Commons has adjourned, and MPs won't be back in Parliament until September.

Given Public Safety Minister Vic Toews' statements and ongoing PR push, this invasive bill is very likely to reappear. So our job now is to spend the summer engaging as many Canadians as possible into growing and supporting our list of Pro-Privacy MPs, so we can push back even harder in the fall.

We've moved politics, before, and now we've pushed a majority government to press pause on the warrantless spying scheme that they've promised to push since the election. Together we can do anything. Read more »